In the wake of last week’s terrorist attack in Paris, Anonymous began it’s biggest assault ever against ISIS – and now they are calling out U.S. tech companies.
[revad1]
Most notably, ISIS is demanding the Silicon Valley start-up CloudFlare to stop hosting websites run by ISIS. CloudFlare acts as a intermediary or filter against a common hack known as DDoS which floods a server with tremendous amounts of traffic, thus crashing them.
@CloudFlare Stop Protecting #ISIS Websites We Are #Anonymous We Are Legion We Do Not Forgive We Do Not Forget Expect Us!
— unanymous (@unanymous_1) November 15, 2015
Once again, @CloudFlare have been found to be providing services to pro-#IslamicState websites. Shameful. #OpISIS#Daesh#Anonymous
— Anonymous (@GroupAnon) November 16, 2015
This created a tremendous amount of backlash against the successful start-up now worth over $1 billion. The CEO, Matthew Prince, was quick to defend his company however, telling The Register:
“I did see a Twitter handle said that they were mad at us. I’d suggest this was armchair analysis by kids — it’s hard to take seriously. Anonymous uses us for some of its sites, despite pressure from some quarters for us to take Anonymous sites offline…Even if we were hosting sites for ISIS, it wouldn’t be of any use to us … I should imagine those kinds of people pay with stolen credit cards and so that’s a negative for us.”
His interview went on to say that most of the time, investigators want him to keep the sites up so they can investigate.
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From the Register:
Matthew Prince, CloudFlare’s cofounder and CEO, has hit back at Anonymous, which claimed his firm backs ISIS by keeping terror websites up and running.
CloudFlare is a content-distribution network: it acts like a huge sponge, soaking up deluges of internet traffic that would otherwise overwhelm small to medium-sized websites, and dishes out pages and web stuff to visitors.
On Monday, Anonymous vowed to knock ISIS-linked sites offline, and hijack the terror group’s social media accounts used to recruit sympathizers. Anonymous also said it was “shameful” CloudFlare was “providing services to pro-Islamic State websites.”
Who is right in this situation? Anonymous or CloudFlare? Share your opinion in the comments below.
